Safari Update Brings Extension Gallery, Bug Fixes A-Plenty

If you thought Apple had exhausted its goody bag for the week with new hardware on Tuesday, think again. Wednesday morning, Apple made available a Safari 5.0.1 update, with the major new addition being a Safari Extensions Gallery and a whole lotta third-party extensions from major players like Twitter, Bing, eBay and more.

Apple has had a busy week, but Safari lovers haven’t been left out of the fun. Run (don’t walk!) to your Software Update and you’ll discover the yummy goodness of Safari 5.0.1 awaits you. A short restart of your computer later, and you’ll find the Cracker Jack “surprise inside” -- the Safari Extensions Gallery is now open for business, and its shelves are stocked with something for everyone.

“Extensions are a great way for you to add new features to Safari 5.0.1,” Apple’s Safari Extensions Gallery web page boasts. “Built by developers, Safari Extensions use the latest HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript web technologies. And they’re digitally signed and sandboxed for improved security. You can install extensions with one click -- no need to restart Safari.”

Among the first extensions out of the gate are Twitter for Safari, Bing Highlights, breaking news updates from The New York Times and Fox News (how’s that for bipartisan?), 1-Click Weather from The Weather Channel, eBay, Amazon Wish List and a whole lot more.

The full change log for Safari 5.0.1 reveals some other hidden gems and bug fixes as well:• More accurate Top Hit results in the Address Field• More accurate timing for CSS animations• Better stability when using the Safari Reader keyboard shortcut• Better stability when scrolling through MobileMe Mail• Fixes display of multipage articles from www.rollingstone.com in Safari Reader• Fixes an issue that prevented Google Wave and other websites using JavaScript encryption libraries from working correctly on 32-bit systems• Fixes an issue that prevented Safari from launching on Leopard systems with network home directories• Fixes an issue that could cause borders on YouTube thumbnails to disappear when hovering over the thumbnail image• Fixes an issue that could cause Flash content to overlap with other content on www.facebook.com, www.crateandbarrel.com, and other sites when using Flash 10.1• Fixes an issue that prevented boarding passes from www.aa.com from printing correctly• Fixes an issue that could cause DNS prefetching requests to overburden certain routers• Fixes an issue that could cause VoiceOver to misidentify elements of webpages

We don’t know about you, but we like seeing the words “more,” “better” and “fixes” so many times in our change logs. Safari 5.0.1 is available to download now from the Apple website or via Software Update and requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 or later or Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or later. It’s also available for your Windows-loving friends, so go get it!